Authors:Craig Anslow, Stuart Marshall, James Noble, and Robert Biddle
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Abstract:3D web software visualization has always been expensive, special purpose and hard to programme. Flash requires proprietary authoring tools and involves large amounts of scripting to produce 3D effects, Java applets are slow to load and are not reliable on all platforms, and VRML is no longer maintained. We can make 3D software visualization cheap, portable and easy by using X3D, which is a lightweight open standard for web 3D graphics. We have replicated three example algorithm animations from Najork and Brown in X3D which unite multiple views, capture the history of execution, and display additional information. We outline our experience, and discuss the suitability of X3D as an output format for algorithm animation software..
Keywords: Software Visualisation, 3D, WWW, Tools, Traces